Is God a mathematician?

THE physicist Richard Feynman said, "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."

More years ago than I care to reckon up, I met Feynman. I was then out to write a sort of War and Peace of War World II, and early on in the moonstruck enterprise I realised that if I were at all serious about it, I had to learn something right away about the atomic bomb. Tolstoy could not consult Kutuzov, the general who drove Napoleon out of Russia, because the canny old one-eyed field marshal was long since dead; but when I started to work on my unlikely notion nearly all the men who had created the bomb were alive, and several of them were at the California Institute of Technology, including Feynman. President Truman, who had been an artilleryman in World War I, said of the bomb, "It was a bigger piece of artillery, so I used it," a striking remark which shows up in my War and Remembrance but surely something less than the whole story. So I went to Caltech to talk to those who knew the whole story.

This may seem monstrously pushy, and no doubt it was. Like many
novelists I have spun my books out of my experiences when I could, but
in attempting work far outside my own relatively jog-trot existence I
have had to pick other men's brains. My World War II service, three
years on destroyer-minesweepers in the Pacific, gave me the substance of
The Caine Mutiny, but taught me nothing at all about the world
storm that swept me from Manhattan to the south Pacific like a driven
leaf. When the bomb fell on Hiroshima my ship was a bobbing speck on
picket duty in the rough waters off Okinawa, and we had just survived a
kamikaze attack unscathed; so I joined heartily in the merriment aboard
ship, very glad that I had survived the war and would soon go back to my
free civilian life and marry my sweetheart. As to the larger issues of
dropping a whacking new bomb made of uranium on a Japanese city, I was
innocent and indifferent. The radio said that our scientists had
"harnessed the power of the sun", and that was quite enough for me and
for all of us aboard that old four-piper, halfway around the world from
home.

The Caltech scientists received me cordially, and talked
freely about their adventures in working on the bomb. I remember one
physicist telling me, for instance, how he drove to the Trinity test
site in New Mexico with the dread plutonium core in the back seat of his
car. But to a man, one after another, they warned me so earnestly not
to try to see Richard Feynman that I began to think of him as a human
plutonium core. However, I had nothing to lose so I did try, and somehow
I found myself in his office, talking to a lean guy in white
shirtsleeves, with long hair and a sharply humorous countenance calling
to mind a bust Voltaire. It didn't go well at first.

"You know,"
he said, as I groped to explain my purpose, "while you're talking,
you're not learning anything." So I blurted out baldly, any old way, my
vision of a fiction work throwing a rope around the whole global war. As
I spoke, an enigmatic look came over that strong face, something like
remote tolerant amusement. "Well, that's the sort of thing genius
reaches out for," he said, and he took over the conversation.

In
swift strokes Feynman brought the entire Manhattan project to life, the
excitement and the perils alike, mentioning that once in a laboratory
corridor he passed uranium materials stacked so carelessly that a chain
reaction was within a whisker of going off. His main point was that the
whole enterprise was gigantically messy, and that the atomic bomb was by
no means at a frontier of science. He put it so: "It wasn't a lion
hunt, it was a rabbit shoot." There was no Nobel prize, that is to say,
in the concept or the calculations; it was just a challenge, if a huge
one, to audacious innovative technology and brute industrial effort.

This
formidable fellow walked out of the building with me, and said as we
were parting: "Do you know calculus?" I admitted that I didn't. "You had
better learn it," he said. "It's the language God talks."

As a
Columbia undergraduate, imbibing the Greek philosophy, comparative
religion and general humanism of the noted core curriculum, I rode the
subway to the Bronx once a week to study the Talmud with my grandfather.
The Talmud is a hard grind in Aramaic, and to lighten up things I would
now and then venture an agnostic prod at some tender point of our faith
- say, Joshua's stopping the sun and moon. Grandpa would respond with
good-natured scorn, stroking his full beard, "Where are you creeping
with your lame paws?" It was more pungent in Yiddish, but you get the
idea.

That question has been occurring to me as I write these
words. Disqualified as I have described myself for getting into these
deep murky waters - no academic credentials to speak of, no mathematics
beyond half-forgotten algebra - where am I creeping with this
venturesome causerie?

Fair question, reader, so let me invite you
into the workshop of an old author still creating stories, my work, my
intermittent despair, and my lifelong fun. With a new novel recently
publishing and another on the stocks, I have stepped back from my desk,
drawn breath, and glanced around the shop for overlooked items. One
folder labelled A Child's Garden of God lies to a side, more
scuffed than most, in which for years I've been stashing false starts on
the answer offered by the Bible (insofar as I can grasp it) to the
grand Why of the child and of stumped agnostics. No wonder I have
kept putting it off! A big bite.

Newton summed up his lifework:
"I know not what I seem to the world, but to myself I seem to have been
only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and
then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilst the great
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

It was this
child having fun on the beach who came upon the smoother pebble called
the calculus (oddly, the word means "pebble"), enabling thinkers after
him to venture far out on that ocean of truth, toward a distant shore of
final theory which, as they keep learning to their gloomy puzzlement,
ever recedes. Isaac Newton not only found Feynman's "language God
talks", he also mastered God's Bible, a fact that embarrasses some
scientists. Newton put Feynman's dictum on calculus, which he called
"fluxions", in plain words suited to his own faith: "God created
everything by number, weight, and measure." An agnostic paraphrase for
our day might be: "All that is truly knowable is knowable only by
numbers, weight, and measure." Or as James Jeans put it, "God is a
mathematician."

Is the stage really too big for the drama, as
Feynman asserted? I believe it's possible to disagree, and that is the
theme of my book.

Taken from Herman Wouk's The Language God Talks: On science and religion, reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company

Profile:Herman Wouk is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and other novels. The Language God Talks is published this month by Little, Brown and Company

44 Comments

A clever man talking about clever men, the antidote to to the X Factor I feel clean!

Helgi
on April 19, 2010 2:48 PM

"Where are you creeping with your lame paws?"
You should have stopped right there.

"Is the stage really too big for the drama, as Feynman asserted? I believe it's possible to disagree, and that is the theme of my book."
It may be possible not to believe, given you are sufficiently ignorant. To argue logically against is as improbable as impossible, all you can do is mumble nonsense to others on your "wavelength" (sufficiently ignorant and illogical).

Layman
on April 19, 2010 3:55 PM

Calculus is used to create models of continuous universes. Our universe is discontinuous. If you must have a god, His native language isn't Calculus.

By Rees
on April 19, 2010 5:25 PM

I agree with Feynman that the stage is definately too big if its just intended for God to observe humans, might be about right however if the stage was intended for humans to observe God.

Warren
on April 19, 2010 5:28 PM

Intriguing

midwest
on April 19, 2010 6:16 PM

Interesting, although you may have shortened your own career. There appears to be 2 branches of science these days. The standard science and the religion of science (see Helgi's comment for example of this). Unfortunately, the "elders" of the religion of science tend to despise anyone who doesnt follow their beliefs (faiths/theologies) and attacks them on personal levels (again, see Helgi's comment).

A Greenhill
on April 19, 2010 7:15 PM

I don't want to discourage you ~ but it seems strange that somebody with so little qualifications would talk about three subjects that are vast and complicated beyond imagination: math, physics & religion.

Dad
on April 19, 2010 7:29 PM

"midwest", it's not so much two branches of science as two types of people: Those that see ignorance as utterly detestable... and those that see ignorance as an opportunity to teach. Some people end up falling into the former when they feel fed up and hopeless against today's regular political attacks on the scientific method and the staggering scientific ignorance of the general population.

No doubt there is an actual stubborn scientific elite that sometimes impedes scientific revolution... but a rude commenter on the internet is most likely not one of those people.

Galileo thought that mathematics are the language of Nature. Nature is here, in front of my eyes. Saying that somebody, who I do not know if he really exists, is a mathematician is, in my opinion, truly hazardous.

midwest
on April 19, 2010 8:48 PM

"Dad", im not sure how you are defining "ignorance", since we are all ignorant to varying degrees on varying subjects. I find ignorance as an opportunity to learn so that must mean i dont fall into the "2 types of people" you mentioned. And, at what point does ignorance become detestable? Who defines that line? You? Someone else? A committee? Society (which cant be since you stated the general public is "ignorant")? If i were to define ignorance, i would say that a truly ignorant person is someone who claims an intellectual superiority over others and then belittles them because of it.

pat mccormack
on April 19, 2010 9:05 PM

My old Latin teacher told us that there was a wee box of pebbles on carriages in Rome. The turning of the wheel dropped pebbles into another box to keep track of the fare. Hence "doing the pebbles" /calculus.
BTW -- Feynman Integrals. Where the heck did he get that idea from??

As great as the achievements of Western Science are, it will never see the truth of the universe because it uses practical measurements that only indirectly measure the reality, not direct experience.

daddy
on April 19, 2010 10:52 PM

Mr Wouk,

If this post was intended to make me never wish to ever read a single word of anything you have ever written then you have succeeded.

KMarx
on April 19, 2010 11:04 PM

I liked that article. Thanks for publishing it. I have no idea what the haters are carrying on about - they must be full of hateraide today.

And, I liked The Caine Mutiny. Good book, even the movie was good. Oh yeah. Keep up the good work.

Possibilus
on April 19, 2010 11:34 PM

If Feynman and Jeans speak of mathematics and specifically calculus as the language of God, that is fair enough in terms of how Man atttempts to understand, describe, and live in this Universe. Nevertheless, while truly important, these inventions are only a part of the Universe and therefore God, because they do not account for the love a parent feels for their child, a lover for another lover, the beauty of justice delivered, or the breathtaking spectacle of sunrise or sunset. While artists and poets are what they are in part because they are driven to perceptual and experiential means of expression (and probably poor at math but not always), and mathematicians driven to their grand formulae because they so eloquently explain and prove certain realities and possibilities (and because they are sometimes not as fond of words and subjective arts), both and all in between are part of the essential reality of the Universe, and viva le difference! Neither has the inside track on God or the Universe for good reason; both are intended to challenge each other to higher heavens.

NOoogie
on April 19, 2010 11:41 PM

You know enough to weave together the larger tapestry, yet not be "expert" enough or "progressive enough" to be stuck in the box as nearly 90% of "experts" in these fields are.

Stepping back, way back but knowing what is in front of you can make you a unique observer.

Don't let anyone here discourage you. The universe was shown by the double slit experiment and other quantum anomolies to be "multijective" - influenced by the observer in every case. Objectivity does not exist; therefore those who propose to know more based on "objectivity" are wise fools as the bible suggests.

I wonder too whether the stage is to big. For Feynman, we are planks in the house (universe). For me, it is reversed. The entirety of creation is a laid planck for the interaction of awareness and consciousness, and ultimately G_D and the human heart.

Nuclear weapons increased the ratio of drama to stage, didn't they? There is a Midrash that Adam HaRishon, Adam the first man, was created as an individual to teach you the power of the individual to affect the world for good or bad. The Lubavitcher Rebbe says we especially feel that in our times when one person has the power to destroy the world. However, the positive implication is even greater. One individual now has the corresponding and greater power to achieve good.

That the universe extends impossibly far beyond human comprehension is more a reflection of humanity's lack of cognitive tools than it is of any purpose inherent in the universe.

A minor physicist
on April 20, 2010 12:31 AM

To Pat McCormack: Feynman's development of path integrals grew out of a number of things, including the "principle of least action" in mechanics and some work important by Dirac. Feynman greatly admired Dirac's work and then expanded it greatly.

DonC
on April 20, 2010 12:43 AM

The bile of some of the comments is amazing. Back when I was an undergraduate of Physics at William & Mary, Dr Feynman was considered a role model all my Professors aspired to.

Interestingly, back then, my Professors both pondered on God's place in science and likewise, how the Judeo-Christian Creation beliefs actually progressed science through dark ages and assisted in fomenting the growth of the Enlightenment.

In later life, I had the special privilege of working with one of the 'Junior Scientists' at Los Alamos during the time Mr Wouk was in the Navy. While I don't know which side of the Feynman/Wouk discussion he would take, he is a devout Jew, and manages to have his religion and his science.

Science does not deny religion. By definition religion is 'supernatural' and science is rooted in the 'natural'. Unfortunately, this is apparently unknown to most, as the real problem with 'Creationism' is that the scientific method does not include: Step 1: stuff, Step 2: more stuff, Step 3: A MIRACLE HAPPENS. Science is a collection of facts and theories that one man (or woman) can discover, and another man re-create. Miracles by definition are not science; however, the choice of belief in them is an individual decision.

Belief in science, and miracles are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and neither is the belief in either an indication of a person's 'ignorance' or knowledge. Now, calculus is a skill, and using a computer is also a skill. Both of these skills may help us not remain ignorant; however, neither is sufficient in itself to guarantee that one remains so.

John Sullivan
on April 20, 2010 12:50 AM

ANYTHING written by H. Wouk is surely a good read.

Gratin
on April 20, 2010 1:22 AM

So through having no real understanding of any of the subjects he is discussing he has thereby concluded that their could be a God? Wow. There goes 15 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. Why would anyone want to read a book of this airey fairy garbage? He had some interesting stories to tell about other people. He should have stuck to that.

Galileo thought that mathematics are the language of Nature. Nature is here, in front of my eyes. Saying that somebody, who I do not know if he really exists, is a mathematician is, in my opinion, truly hazardous.
Sct1886: My belief is those whom fail to see the perfect harmony of beauty, art and form following function in nature are the biggest fools of all.

Kenneth Webb
on April 20, 2010 2:07 AM

I don't know calculus or physics, but I know a shapely sentence, an observing eye and a way with a story whenever I meet them, as here in this little piece.

Mark30339
on April 20, 2010 2:20 AM

What a treat to have a WWII veteran and gifted author still at work in our age. Feynman's acknowledgment of a creator -- and challenge to religion is perfect and seems to be played out everywhere, even in this thread's comments. In my view we are born to discover and expand mankind's appreciation for creation. But we so readily succumb to fighting over crumbs and ignoring our immense potential to build, grow, contribute and encourage. Every cynical comment is not just a waste of time, but also an insight into the commenter's self-loathing and longing for significance.

Dear Mr Wouk: It is an honour just to hear from a distinguished author and WW2 Navy veteran. God must be a mathematician, he made a Universe where R = ct and GM = tc^3. In Planck units, those two expressions combine as M = R = t. Such beauty may be too simple for human minds to grasp. I look forward to your new book.

Pace Dr. Feynman -- Mathematics is to physics as grammar is to poetry.

Playing with the building blocks is not the same as creating...

"One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"

But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

I had the privilege of meeting Feynman while a graduate students in physics. He made an enormous impression on me, and I name him as one of the half-dozen men who truly inspire me.

John Blake
on April 20, 2010 4:33 AM

Nothing exists in isolation, or ever stays the same. Existence entails quantity, relation, substance-- how many of what kind, how durably disposed? Being exists in essence as potential, for being and becoming, growth and change, is Nature's sole discernible reality. What mind first tallies, hand-and-eye align-- so we address imagined worlds, in harmony and proportion each-to-each.

Therein lies beauty, real and true, construed by number but not fixed, never so resolved. And so like number, nothing of beauty finds an end. Mind's Eye encompasses only imperfection-- new contexts, perspectives, vary on old themes, portending infinitely many Noble Strains. Numbers equate, words rhyme, but they both sing.

We do but sojourn here. Heed your first duty, abiding laws and customs to sustain yourself, for what you do accredits who you are. Regard fair youth as comely countenances of fine old age, for on our voyage these are farther shores. Generous and kind, cherish principle, honor above all. Bequeath posterity wise learning in right cause, an affirmation of discernment, trust. Who flees fatality pursues not Life.

-- Sargon of the Anunnaki to Greenslip na Budforth, King ("Owen's Alligator", 2010).

Uriel
on April 20, 2010 4:35 AM

Scott Battles on April 20, 2010 2:03 AM
"My belief is those whom fail to see the perfect harmony of beauty, art and form following function in nature are the biggest fools of all. "

My belief is that those who use "whom" when they ought to use "who" are the biggest fools of all.

Grimblog
on April 20, 2010 4:41 AM

The close-mindedness and intolerance of atheists here is instructive. But (as Anthony Flew documents in his book) Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, etc. saw in their quantum mathematics the mind of God. I'd rather stick with them.

dirk alan
on April 20, 2010 4:42 AM

the universe is a 4d mobius strip.

artaxerxes
on April 20, 2010 4:49 AM

The soul is here simply to experience time and space, duality and separation, and imprint memories of what it means and how it feels to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time universe. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience and the soul's lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and it is holistically imprinted with what it needs to learn regardless of who we are, or where we live, or what we believe. Belief is irrelevant. Everyone experiences time and space, separation, and makes memories of what it was like to inhabit a physical body and live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time universe. After the soul crosses back over into the Spiritual Universe it will look back on this life like it was a dream or movie or a play and we will view our parents, and brothers and sisters, and the people we interacted with as fellow actors who were here for the exact same reason we were, to learn what it means to be separate, something that may be difficult or impossible to learn in a universe where the feelings of oneness and connectedness are overwhelming and infinite due to its holographic nature.

Paul A. M. Dirac, who complemented Heisenberg and Schrödinger with a third formulation of quantum theory, observed that “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”

"I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." - Einstein

Einstein maintained that God manifests himself “in the laws of the universe as a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

The progenitors of quantum physics, the other great scientific discovery of modern times, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac, have all made similar statements... Werner Heisenberg, famous for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and matrix mechanics, said, “In the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought [science and religion], for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.”

Another quantum pioneer, Erwin Schrödinger, who developed wave mechanics, stated: "The scientific picture of the world around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell a word about the sensation of red and blue, bitter and sweet, feelings of delight and sorrow. It knows nothing of beauty and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. ..."

Max Planck, who first introduced the quantum hypothesis, unambiguously held that science complements religion, contending, “There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.”

Michael Murray
on April 20, 2010 6:46 AM

The set of all gods, being empty, is of course a subset of the set of all mathematicians. Feynman is the source of many wonderful quotes including "To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature."

edward
on April 20, 2010 7:24 AM

That mathematical formulae should be capable to represent physical behaviour is a basic assumption of science. There is no proof for that whatsoever.

The early 20th century has seen physics go through a huge shock because it was assumed that Newtonian mechanics could account for all mechanics including the atoms and subatomic particles. However, this was not the case. The reason is yet another wild assumption: that of extrapolation stretched to the extremes. Now, there is another problem, namely, that of dark matter. This was introduced to account for the strange behaviour of the rotation of galaxies. The cause is the same thing: wild and extreme extrapolation.

Notwithstanding its failures, extrapolation is now taken to yet another extreme, that is, to explain religion.

How can human beings be so naive not to learn from past mistakes about the huge limits of extrapolation?

Forlornehope
on April 20, 2010 1:03 PM

Watched a clip of Dawkins on Lovelock's Gaia theory the other night. For a display of unscientific, closed minded, arrogant stupidity it took the whole packet of biscuits. Made me think a bit about his comments on other subjects, like this one.

Ted
on April 20, 2010 4:58 PM

Any power (God) that can conceive of and create the universe we enjoy has got to have an infinite IQ, and we are only a small part of His infinite creations. The Bible says as much when we are reminded that God's ways are much higher than our ways. That's why humans have only a spiritual connection with Him and are reminded to not try to out-think Him. He will have the final say in all situations regarding our universe, but keep trying, folks, that's what we are supposed to be doing to understand our spiritual connection with Him. We'll learn the mathematics when we get there, and I'm sure it will be much higher than calculus.

Michael
on April 20, 2010 5:11 PM

One of the more entertaining aspects of the contemporary mind is its proclivity to trip all over itself disclaiming views that rankle other contemporary minds. Many proclaim the false dichotomy that science is science and religion is religion and by invoking them in purely those limited, contemporary, postmodern contexts, we can leave them nicely sorted and pigeonholed there.

Surely science, therefore, masters faith. Surely faith is antiquated. This must be obvious.

In other words, the resume of science is unimpeachable. Religion is debunked superstition. Entering the debate requires those disclaimers, lest we not be allowed to enter the debate.

Which leaves insight, wonder, awe, inquiry, and even open-mindedness, et al, on the sidelines. And surely too love, beauty, principle, justice, and hundreds of other quite real phenomenon, not a one of which is scientifically provable. Philosophically yes; scientifically, no.

Is the scientific method the only way in which we can learn things? Can the scientific method reveal all knowledge about the universe? Can we learn everything there is to learn by following the scientific method? To state it in yet another way, do other approaches to understanding the world have any value, or do you think they should all be discarded in favor of the scientific method?

The scientific method is not helpful for telling me how to construct a persuasive opinion piece, or helping me decide what I think about matters of public policy, or for figuring out which guy to vote for. It seems to me that there are huge swaths of human experience that the scientific method just isn't good at explaining.

Science is great. Science is wonderful. Science is not, however, the be-all-end-all of human knowledge. It's just one way among many of learning about the world.

RebeccaH
on April 20, 2010 8:53 PM

I don't know how scientists who are confronted with this magnificent universe with all its mysteries, don't believe in God. I don't mean that white-bearded Old Man of the Bible. I mean GOD (reverb) who is beyond our tiny human comprehension. What else are we to call the omnipotent force that created the universe but God, even if we don't understand?

Dana
on April 20, 2010 9:58 PM

Re: such as daddy & Helgi
Who are these arrogant snips who think they know so much? Who goes to the theatre to be blinded by the stage, anyway?

Dianne Murphy
on September 15, 2010 3:09 AM

At Rudyard High School (Michigan) in 1961, my trigonomitry teacher was named Hermann Wouk. I'm wondering if he's THE Hermann Wouk. He had a thick Russian accent

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